So it turns out that the MacBook Air’s battery is a single discrete block (albeit a very thin one) that runs across the bottom of much of the case, and it’s relatively easy for an end user to swap out. Some people are calling this good news, but to me it just means that there really is no reason bar cost for not making the thing user swappable in the first place. I guess it might have meant weakening the case, but I’m not convinced; this is Apple, after all — I’m sure they could have come up with a neat battery removal mechanism if they had the will (I’m thinking a covered slot on one side of the device that you slide the battery into — like a really big PCMCIA card). I guess they’re just experimenting to see if people are prepared to put up with it. Lets hope people don’t an Apple fix this in the next version.

Of all the announcements this year, this one is definitely the biggie (although arguably, not the most significant — the AppleTV could easily trump it in long-term industry impact.) Apple’s new ultraportable was the announcement everyone was waiting for, and it’s generated the most media buzz, most of it positive. There’s no denying the machine is desirable, one thing Apple know how to do is design, and the Air is impressive even by their standards. It’s also a pretty impressive feat of engineering; a 13.3” laptop, averaging about 1cm thick and weighing a just over 1.3kg that manages to squeeze in a 1.8GHz Core2 Duo, 2GB RAM and a full-size, backlit keyboard, as well as a screen as good as you’ll find on any laptop. Oh and the battery life is quoted at an extensive (for the size) 5 hours. It really is an impressive piece of work.

Obviously, to get the size down so far, a couple of compromises have been made; it lacks an optical drive (to mitigate that can mount one from a nearby desktop machine over WiFi — a neat trick, but I wonder how fast the access will be,) has no speakers and sports a redesigned, smaller power connector, probably making the device incompatible with any existing MacBook adaptors you may have.

The basic model comes in at £1200, which isn’t excessive for a machine like this. It’s obviously much more expensive than the current crop of ultraportables from the like of Asus, and Packard Bell, but that’s not really the market segment it fits into. This isn’t a low powered palmtop, running a pared down Linux distro on A 500MHz via chip; it’s a full-spec PC squeezed into an ultraportable notebook form-factor. The 12” Vaios and Thinkpads are this device’s competition, and in that context, the price looks fairly competitive.

But I wouldn’t buy one.

Why not? That’s a very good question. It looks great, it’s got all the features I care about, is incredibly lightweight, runs my favourite workstation OS, and fits comfortably into my acceptable laptop price-range. The problem is simply one of longevity. Apple consumer goods have been coming without replacable batteries for a while now, and I’ve always been more-or-less OK with that because iPods and iPhones, at a couple of hundred quid, pretty much fall into the “replace every couple of years” price bracket anyway. Is that because I have more money than sense? Quite possibly, but when we’re talking about what qualifies as disposable technology, even I draw the line somewhere significantly south of a £1200 (or more) laptop.

It’s a shame; in so many ways, this would be the perfect laptop for me, but I can really see this really hurting its sales badly — I just can’t imagine anyone parting with that much money for something that’s only going to last as long as its battery. I know I won’t.

Update: OK — so it turns out that Apple will replace the battery for $130 (US, so I guess about £80.) That’s the cost of the battery, so fitting is effectively free. Also, a commenter called Andrew on Engadget pointed out that there’s almost certainly no discrete battery to be replaced; in order to get the thing as thin as that, they’ve likely spread the battery out across the whole inside of the case; everywhere there was a bit of space will have a battery cell in it.

So, maybe the decision was a genuine compromise, rather than a rip-off, and it looks like Apple have made the commitment to make sure people canget a new battery at low-ish cost, but I don’t think this really changes my opinion. People like the flexibility of swapping batteries out, they like the feeling of security of having a spare. Personally, I just wouldn’t be comfortable knowing that my ability to replace a dying battery is dependant on a third party continuing to offer a service that they’re only offering out of good-will in the first place.

Not as bad as I first thought then. But still a stopper for me, and, I imagine, for a lot of other people as well. In a way, it’s even more of a shame if they have a good reason for it not being replaceable; it means that the product just isn’t viable, rather than has been spoiled by a misguided attempt to upsell.